Latin literature

Latin literature includes the essays, histories, poems, plays, and other writings written in the Latin language. The beginning of formal Latin literature dates to 240 BC, when the first stage play in Latin was performed in Rome. Latin literature flourished for the next six centuries. The classical era of Latin literature can be roughly divided into several periods: early Latin literature, the golden age, the imperial period and Late Antiquity.

Latin was the language of the ancient Romans as well as being the lingua franca of Western and Central Europe throughout the Middle Ages. Latin literature features the work of Roman authors, such as Cicero, Virgil, Ovid and Horace, but also includes the work of European writers after the fall of the Empire, from religious writers like Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) to secular writers like Francis Bacon (1561–1626), Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), and Isaac Newton (1642–1727).

History

Early Latin literature

Although literature in Latin followed a continual development over several centuries, the beginnings of formal Latin literature started with the regular performance of comedies and tragedies in Rome in 240 BC, one year after the conclusion of the First Punic War. These initial comedies and tragedies were adapted from Greek drama by Livius Andronicus, a Greek prisoner of war who had been brought to Rome as a slave in 272 BC. Andronicus translated Homer's Odyssey into Latin using a traditional Latin verse form called Saturnian meter. In 235 BC, Gnaeus Naevius, a Roman citizen, continued this tradition of producing dramas that were reworkings of Greek originals, or fabula palliata, and he expanded on this by producing a new type of drama, fabula praetexta, or tragedies based on Roman myths and history, starting in 222 BC. Later in life, Naevius composed an epic poem in Saturnian meter on the first Punic War, in which he had fought.

Other epic poets followed Naevius.